 • 
while the body is wood, providing a base for
lavish capes and vestments. Garcia is the leader
of a group of prominent Santo Niño collectors
who display their icons during the Feast of the
Santo Niño in some of Cebu's best shopping
malls and hotels. When they met to discuss for-
mally incorporating their club, an attorney
member cried out to the group, "You can pay
me in ivory!"
I tell Garcia I want to buy an ivory Santo Niño
in a sleeping position. "Like this," I say, touching
a nger to my lower lip. Garcia puts a nger to
his lip too. "Dormido style," he says approvingly.
My goal in meeting Garcia is to understand
his country's ivory trade and possibly get a lead
on who was behind . tons of illegal ivory
seized by customs agents in Manila in , .
tons seized there in , and . tons bound
for the Philippines seized by Taiwan in .
Assuming an average of  pounds of ivory per
elephant, these seizures represent about ,
elephants. According to the Convention on In-
ternational Trade in Endangered Species of Wild
Fauna and Flora ( ), the treaty organiza-
tion that sets international wildlife trade policy,
the Philippines is merely a transit country for
ivory headed to China. But has limited
resources. Until last year it employed just one
enforcement o cer to police more than ,
animal and plant species. Its assessment of
the Philippines doesn't square with what Jose
Yuchongco, chief of the Philippine customs
police, told a Manila newspaper not long a er
making a major seizure in : " e Philip-
pines is a favorite destination of these smuggled
elephant tusks, maybe because Filipino Catho-
lics are fond of images of saints that are made
of ivory." On Cebu the link between ivory and
the church is so strong that the word for ivory,
garing, has a second meaning: "religious statue."
-
"Ivory, ivory, ivory," says the saleswoman at the
Savelli Gallery on St. Peter's Square in Vatican
City. "You didn't expect so much. I can see it in
your face." e Vatican has recently demonstrat-
ed a commitment to confronting transnational
criminal problems, signing agreements on drug
tra cking, terrorism, and organized crime. But
it has not signed the treaty and so is not
subject to the ivory ban. If I buy an ivory cru-
ci x, the saleswoman says, the shop will have it
blessed by a Vatican priest and shipped to me.
Although the world has found substitutes for
every one of ivory's practical uses---billiard balls,
piano keys, brush handles---its religious use is
frozen in amber, and its role as a political symbol
persists. Last year Lebanon's President Michel
Sleiman gave Pope Benedict XVI an ivory-and-
gold thurible. In  Philippine President Glo-
ria Macapagal-Arroyo gave an ivory Santo Niño
to Pope Benedict XVI. For Christmas in 
President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan
bought an ivory Madonna originally presented
to them as a state gi by Pope John Paul II. All
these gi s made international headlines. Even
Kenya's President Daniel arap Moi, father of the
global ivory ban, once gave Pope John Paul II
an elephant tusk. Moi would later make a big-
ger symbolic gesture, setting re to  tons of
Kenyan ivory, perhaps the most iconic act in
conservation history.
Father Jay is curator of his archdiocese's an-
nual Santo Niño exhibition, which celebrates
the best of his parishioners' collections and lls
a two-story building outside Manila. e more
than  displays are drenched in so many fresh
owers and enveloped in such so "Ave Maria"
music that I'm reminded of a funeral as I look at
the pale bodies dressed up like tiny kings. Ivory
Santo Niños wear gold-plated crowns, jewels, and
Swarovski crystal necklaces. eir eyes are hand-
painted on glass imported from Germany. eir
eyelashes are individual goat hairs. The gold
thread in their capes is real, imported from India.
The elaborate displays are often owned by
families of surprisingly modest means. Devotees
have opened bankbooks in the names of their
ivory icons. ey name them in their wills. "I
don't call it extravagant," Father Jay says. "I call it
an o ering to God." He surveys the child images,
some of which are decorated in lagang, silvery
mother of pearl owers carved from nautilus
shells. "When it comes to Santo Niño devotion,"